


Change of aspect

by FancyTrinkets



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angels and Demons Can Choose Their Genitalia (Good Omens), Aziraphale's True Form (Good Omens), Bodyswap, Crowley's Flat (Good Omens), Crowley's True Form (Good Omens), Flashbacks, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Metaphysical Sex, POV Crowley (Good Omens), Pre-Fall (Good Omens), The Night After the Almost Apocalypse (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:29:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25507486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FancyTrinkets/pseuds/FancyTrinkets
Summary: Choose your faces wisely.Easy for a witch to say, but practically speaking, how are an angel and a demon to implement it? What's the step by step?If you ask Crowley, a book of prophecy really ought to come with an instruction manual.Art byjoegrrnaught-theineffable
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 47
Kudos: 151
Collections: Good Omens Mini Bang





	Change of aspect

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of the Do It With Style Good Omens Mini Bang. The artwork for this story is by joegrrnaught, who you can find and follow as [@joegrrnaught-theineffable](https://joegrrnaught-theineffable.tumblr.com) on tumblr. 
> 
> Thank you for this gorgeous illustration that captures so well how I envisioned this scene! 
> 
> The link to [joegrrnaught's art post](https://joegrrnaught-theineffable.tumblr.com/post/624645216485425153/how-did-they-figure-out-how-to-swap-bodies-what) is here. Please like and share!
> 
> A big, happy thank you goes out to [@doomed_spectacles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/doomed_spectacles) for beta reading and offering the kind of thoughtful concrit I thrive on. It has made this little piece flow better than it did before. (Also, go check out [ @doomed_spectacles' Good Omens fanfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/doomed_spectacles/works) if you haven't already; it's delightful.)

_Choose your faces wisely._

Easy for a witch to say, but practically speaking, how are an angel and a demon to implement it? What's the step by step?

If you ask Crowley, a book of prophecy really ought to come with an instruction manual.

* * *

Crowley stares into his glass of whisky. He thought it would help, but he doesn't much feel like drinking. He agitates the glass and watches the swirling liquid — as if by some act of augury, he could read the future there.

Not the right sort of spirits for that, he thinks, and looks up to see Aziraphale watching him from across the kitchen.

"You sure about this? Us, trading places?"

"No," Aziraphale admits. "But what else could it mean?"

"Right," Crowley says, and steps away from the center island to claim some space. 

He leaves his glass, its contents untasted, abandoned on the dark countertop. 

"Might as well get started."

Lacking a clear set of guidelines, Crowley tries the simplest, most obvious solution. He lifts his hand, draws power from Below, and begins to transform his appearance with a shapeshifting miracle. 

It ought to be the same as shifting into serpent form — he channels power, imagines himself as a beast with scales, growing slender and elongated, and then he changes. The problem is, he has no idea how it feels to be Aziraphale. 

So he concentrates on what he supposes is the next best thing. He calls to mind every sensory memory of Aziraphale he's ever gathered. 

From his affable face to the shapely contours of his feet, Aziraphale is easy to picture. Crowley draws upon thousands of years of visual memory to build a detailed mental sculpture of the angel who stands ten paces away and watches him with patient curiosity. 

Aziraphale is quiet, but when Crowley thinks of his voice, it's as though he can hear it, startling and bold in its immediacy. Aziraphale is calling out to greet him, chiding him for being late or being devilish, laughing joyfully around a mouthful of lunch, and whispering secrets he's not supposed to tell. 

And his scent — earthly-yet-ethereal — is right there as well, as comforting and familiar as an old bookshop. 

Taste is lacking — _Hah!_ Crowley thinks, _It really is_. He teases Aziraphale often enough for his dubious fashion sense and unabashed love of tartan. But taste, in its other meaning, is an embodied sense that won't help him. He's never licked Aziraphale, nor kissed him. He can't begin to know what he would taste like. But taste and smell are closely linked. Having one of the two should be enough, or so Crowley hopes.

Touch is the final piece. It's rare and dangerous between them, an intimacy they can't often risk. So his memories are built of small things, mostly — the hasty jostle of an elbow, a handshake in the backroom of the bookshop, or the swift brush of fingertips along the handle of a briefcase. 

Not much, but it will have to do.

He shuts his eyes and focuses on his mental image of Aziraphale. As occult power surges through him, he takes hold of it, commands it, and pushes himself to transform.

It should be simple, but nothing happens.

With a frustrated groan, Crowley releases the power he's gathered, and it flows back down to its source.

"Performance anxiety?" Aziraphale asks.

"Just give me a minute here." 

Failure can fuel creativity, and Crowley already has another idea. 

The thing about becoming a serpent is that he doesn't need to look at a snake, or lick one, or imagine the rush of its scales as it moves along his skin. He only needs to feel his own serpentine nature uncoiling within himself. It's not a visualization exercise. It's a feeling.

He's almost certain he can use this insight to his advantage. Because the strangest and most notable feeling he's ever had is the way he feels about Aziraphale. 

He can catalog it, unfolding through the years.

It begins on the wall in Eden, a flickering spark that Crowley notices, but can't name. In those early days, he simply ignores it. He sets off on his own and gets to know the world, both in its vastness and in its particularities. He learns the ways of humans, so often mixing treachery with their kindness. And so he finds that he enjoys being solitary. 

He's beholden to Hell — of course, always _that_ — but on Earth, no party can claim his allegiance. He keeps to himself and makes his own way.

Aziraphale is the strange reminder that something has its hooks in him, after all. There's an ill-defined, inchoate _something_ that rises in his belly and does somersaults whenever the angel looks at him. He can't properly identify it, but he knows it isn't evil. And since long-term proximity to Aziraphale makes it stronger, he mostly keeps clear of the city-states and fiefdoms where the angel lives. 

And that works well for the first five thousand years. 

Once the Arrangement starts, everything changes. Proximity to Aziraphale is more the rule than the exception. And that scintillating, not-evil feeling refuses to leave him in peace. Crowley's only recourse is to ignore and suppress it.

Bone deep weariness is the reason he lets his guard down one night at the Dowlings'.

A garden party has ended late and by the time all the guests have gone home, he and Aziraphale are too tired to stand. They sit on the floor, braced by the wall and sheltered in darkness. Aziraphale's tired head falls to Crowley's shoulder and that soft cloud of hair brushes his chin. Crowley sits, frozen, not sure if the moment is real or if he's imagining it. 

He can hear his own heartbeat, loud and percussive, and everything — everything! — feels riotous and torrential, like a storm rising up around him. Then Aziraphale yawns and shimmies closer, tucking his shoulder and leaning in, so that his head rests more comfortably on Crowley's chest. It's easy, then, to slip his arm around the angel's back and rest.

Hours pass before Crowley stirs. He wakes with Aziraphale still curled against him, breathing softly. The angel has actually fallen asleep. Carefully, so as not to wake him, Crowley tilts his head against the wall to chase off the stiffness in his neck. As he looks up at the blank canvas of the ceiling, it finally occurs to him: _He trusts me completely_. 

That thought shivers through him and he feels electrified. It's as though he's been struck, but not destroyed. Instead, he's a lightning rod — an open channel for some unending flare of brilliance, lighting up the dark. 

And — _yes!_ That's exactly the memory he's been searching for. 

Not the softness of Aziraphale's hair or the strength of his hands, but the feeling of closeness — the strange electric spark that lights up and then flows like a current between them. 

He doesn't still know what it is, not properly, but perhaps it doesn't need to be named. Crowley thinks he can use it just the same. 

As he pulls power up from Hell, he lets it mingle with that glowing feeling he has for Aziraphale. Every particle in his body fizzes like the bubbles in soda water and he feels himself shifting. But this change isn't simple or intuitive. He has to hold back the serpent as it fights to take control. 

He focuses again on his own mental image of Aziraphale while his body tenses and shivers. He grimaces and snarls though the final burst of discomfort. And then it's done. Agitated particles relax into the new shape he's forced them into. 

Aziraphale takes one look at him and simply says, "No."

"What?" he asks. 

In response, Aziraphale laughs, which doesn't bode well. 

With the power of Hell still buzzing at his fingertips, Crowley snaps his fingers and summons a full length mirror from artifact storage.

"Oh," he says. 

When he frowns, a disconcertingly slender, scaly, and snake-eyed version of Aziraphale frowns back at him from the mirror. 

"That's not terrific."

With another miracle, Crowley reverts to his proper form. 

So much for his only idea.

But Aziraphale has something else in mind. Crowley can tell by the way he stands and tilts his head, the way he frowns while his eyebrows furrow. He's working it all out, and in a minute or two, he'll explain.

Crowley waits and watches.

He tries to imagine how Aziraphale would appear to an objective observer. 

Soft and unimpressive? Would they even pay attention to him as he turns towards the mirror, checks his reflection, and fastidiously straightens his bowtie? Perhaps a stranger would ignore him entirely, finding the mirror itself far more interesting. 

Hard to blame them, he thinks. It's a nice mirror — gilded frame, golden serpents, their eyes inset with citrines. 

Crowley's had it in storage for ages. He keeps a tidy flat, but he's collected just as many unusual and significant objects as Aziraphale has. Perhaps if all goes well, they'll both survive long enough to compare their collections, maybe toss out the duplicates, and– and _what_? Move in together? Like some ridiculous parody of a human couple?

Crowley shakes his head to clear out the daydream. When he looks up again, Aziraphale is right in front of him.

"I have an idea!"

"Nghf," Crowley says, unsettled by the sudden proximity. 

"Take my hand," Aziraphale suggests, "and let's try something more like possession."

Crowley looks at him, uncertain, and hesitates. When he reaches out, Aziraphale's warm, strong hand takes hold of his.

"Now what?"

"Well, I'm not sure, it was different when I was discorporated." 

Aziraphale frowns and then begins to stroke Crowley's hand — and for Someone's sake! — that's an alarming level of intimacy. Crowley almost snatches his hand away before he remembers he doesn't have to. Not anymore. 

Aziraphale seems lost in thought, focused on solving their shared predicament. 

"Have you never possessed anyone before?"

"What? No." Crowley shakes his head. "I mean, not my style, is it? Gotta let them choose on their own. Where's the fairness in it if you take over and do it for them?"

The Dark Council, of course, looks fondly upon possession. But Hell has special agents for that. It's never been Crowley's job. And he's never wanted any part of it, so he hasn't looked closely at the mechanics. But he suspects it's easier to inhabit a body when you haven't already got one of your own. 

Aziraphale sighs. "You aren't being helpful, my dear."

Crowley's aware that he's tired. That's his only explanation for the way it affects him. _My dear_ — just two little words tacked onto the end of a criticism, and suddenly all he wants to do is lean in close and ask for more. 

Feeling tentative, but somehow daring to be bold, Crowley reaches out and rests his free hand on Aziraphale's shoulder. 

Aziraphale looks up at him. His jaw trembles. And when he speaks, it sounds like a warning.

"Crowley."

He's trying to hold back, to keep a barricade in place between them. 

"Hey, relax," Crowley says. "Like this." 

He draws a deep breath in, holds it for a second, and then exhales slowly. 

"Oh?" Aziraphale looks puzzled at first, and then seems to catch on.

"Oh, yes, I see," he says and with every inhale, he gets closer to matching the rhythm of Crowley's breath.

It feels even better than Crowley would have thought. He's not even sure why he suggested it. The urge to sync up with Aziraphale seems all encompassing — as if it's an external force imposing its own will upon him. 

Breath by breath, he relaxes enough that he doesn't twitch or startle when Aziraphale takes hold of his waist.

It's less physical contact than the other day at the abbey, where Crowley — supremely irritated, driven by nerves and adrenaline — pushed Aziraphale to the wall and pinned him there with his hips. But that was sudden and impetuous, whereas this is slow and deliberate. 

Crowley hasn't broken eye contact. He's awash in the kindness of Aziraphale's gaze. 

"Feels floaty," Crowley says. 

Or perhaps he doesn't speak at all. It's hard to distinguish a thought from a sound. 

"Oh, yes, actually, just like that." Aziraphale's voice rings in his ears like the chime of an old-fashioned telephone.

He ought to be alarmed, but the feeling is pleasurable.

"Just like what?" Crowley's thoughts are also whispers, awed and overwhelmed.

All around him, time flows strangely. It stretches and slows down. 

"Is that you?" he asks. "Stopping time? Because it's not me." 

Or perhaps Crowley is doing it. He can't be sure. Under normal circumstances, he rips power up from Hell, channels it through his body, and exerts himself stubbornly against the universe. This is something else. It's like another current flowing against mortal time and easing it to a gentle stop. 

"It's so much," Aziraphale says. 

His eyes are a spectrum of blue, expansive like sky and ocean. There's nothing else except that gaze.

But no, there's more. 

Crowley sees flashes of darkness and light — unresolved at first, as though he's trying to force his embodied visual cortex to make sense of the infinite universe. 

He watches from above, and feels the shifting, unbalanced sensation of measured descent. It's like watching from the window of an airplane as it moves towards a vast plain of clouds. On one side, the clouds are bright, lit up by the sun and practically glowing. On the other side, he glimpses darkness and a gathering storm.

The aircraft — but, no, it's not really there, is it? It's a stand-in. A metaphor. A figment to ease the transition from corporeal thought to this altered state of cognition, nebulous and disembodied, as it always was in the span of existence before Eden.

Those bright clouds are not the sign of daybreak over the surface of the planet. No, on that side is Aziraphale. 

As soon as Crowley understands, everything changes. The flowing surface of clouds begins to gather itself into a brilliant orb, a pulsing heart of Grace, undiminished, as it was in the Beginning.

And on the other side, the darkness, too, is changing. It was never storm clouds, but instead, a glimpse of himself — all violence and desolation, like the churning depths of Hell. 

But no, not that either. 

He is darkness, yes, but it's not — and never has been — a terrible thing. 

He can see himself with fresh sight, as though he's looking with Aziraphale's eyes instead of his own. Not a gaping maw of emptiness, then, but a vortex of shadow, dark and beautiful, velvet soft. And to move near it is to arrive with the feeling of safety — the way it is to be a traveler, to sit and rest, cloaked in the shadows that gather at the edge of a campfire. It's not Grace as it was. It's the spot where Grace was torn away. What's left — or what it has become — is beautiful. 

Everything shimmers and with sudden clarity, Crowley knows that in the physical realm he's crying. Tears roll freely down his face. Aziraphale wants to wipe them away, to comfort him, but Crowley stops him with a thought. 

_No._

It's not that he doesn't want to be soothed. He does, in fact. But not like that.

Aziraphale's urge to comfort ripples through the metaphysical realm. And that feels better somehow. It's like being pulled in for a hug, if bodies were celestial orbs and hugs were a force of gravity.

As Crowley draws closer, the light of Grace trembles and expands. And in one small section, it starts to dissolve, to become nebulous and reveal what it hides. It's not exactly as it was Made, after all. This heart of Grace is wounded. The wound is a shadow, a space carved out, from which light doesn't emanate. It's a paradox that can't be fathomed — a part of Grace that Grace avoids.

"How?" Crowley says, because even when there isn't an answer, he wants one. 

"Here," Aziraphale says, and he starts to translate events from the time before Eden into memories that a corporeal mind can make sense of. 

The First War was neither corporeal nor fought with weapons. If the stories were written now for the first time instead of at the dawn of humanity, they might be stories of cascading information, of networked ethereal processors, linked and always expanding, adapting to new parameters and then later, setting limits, implementing protocols, and defining some of those parameters as malware to be purged.

But then again, maybe not. Revolutions are charismatic, compelling to imagine, though not always to live through. That much hasn't changed.

And so Aziraphale shares a memory that unfolds with all the usual imagery of war. He holds his sword aloft and it burns with righteous fire. But in his heart, a feeling of confusion bleeds into sorrow. So much sorrow. Angels are destroying other angels and he doesn't want to fight. So instead he stands guard over a wounded comrade. 

"Please," he says to another angel who wields a blade and stalks towards him with vicious intent. "I won't let you come any closer."

In response, the other angel snarls and charges forward. 

"You SHALL NOT!" Aziraphale's voice grows deep, reverberates with holy purpose. 

He blocks the incoming attack, deflecting the blade as it slashes forward. After that, he knows what he's supposed to do. He's been commanded to destroy Heaven's adversaries, to expunge them with haste as soon as they reveal themselves. And yet, it doesn't seem right. So instead of attacking, he hesitates and spares a glance for his wounded comrade, still alive but barely hanging on. 

And that settles it. 

He simply can't attack. To step forward and attempt it would be to leave his comrade exposed and vulnerable. And he can't think of anything more important in this moment than doing everything he can to save a life.

When a second attacker approaches, he understands his mistake. He could have taken down the first enemy moments ago and remained strong enough to fend off a second. But now, it's two against one. He isn't powerful like an archangel. He can't survive these odds. 

His adversaries nod to each other as they coordinate their assault. Even as Aziraphale blocks one blade, he can feel the slice and twist as the other one sinks in deep. He doubles over, bleeding ichor, while in the distance, very far off, he can hear the sound of a trumpet. The firmament around him shifts and opens, and he wonders if this is what it feels like to be destroyed.

But instead, the attackers are gone. Reality has shifted around them, banishing them from Heaven to a place that is elsewhere. 

And Aziraphale curls up around himself and for a very long time, he rests. When he opens his eyes again, he sees that his comrade is also awake. 

"What happened?" they ask.

Aziraphale can't say, because he doesn't rightly know. But when he tries to move, he finds he can't do it as well as he used to. He's been cut very deep, and it's going to take a long time to heal. He's nearly spent of ichor, but he stumbles to his feet through force of will and gratitude. And he takes his place among the ranks of angels that remain.

"You would have died," Crowley says or thinks, or something halfway between one and the other. 

"The Almighty spared me," Aziraphale says, and Crowley can feel the sorrowful ache of his words. 

As if in response, his own emotions rise to the surface, dragging memories up with them. They rise like drowned creatures restored from the depths, and for the first time since it happened, he can fully remember his life before the Fall. The images play out in sequence, as a coherent story that didn't exist within his thoughts on Earth. But in this form, as shadow and essence, he knows it as well the Bentley, and park benches, and the bookshop where he always feels welcome.

His own past is much like Aziraphale's — it's the story of an angel defecting from war.

He's a nobody, really, a low-ranking angel who works on the stars. 

"Stick to the Plan," his bosses tell him, and they send him off with schematics.

The instructions are baffling at first. But he's an angel, so he does as he's told. He reads his documents and then he gets to work, playing his own small part to construct the nascent universe. 

He's remarkably good at his job. So much so that the routine becomes dreadfully boring. And he dreams up ways to make the work more exciting.

He explains it, one day, to his supervisor.

"Stick to the Plan."

That's the only reply. Whenever he speaks to anyone, he gets the same frustrating answer, over and over again. 

So he stops checking in with his bosses. He stays away from the other angels altogether. For a long time, he lives where he works, alone in darkness at the edges of everything. And he sticks to the Plan. But in his free time, he tinkers with stardust. He builds little models of the grand ideas he'd like to enact in the universe, if only the Plan would allow it.

Long, lonely eons go by, and he grows tired of his self imposed exile. So he packs up his things and returns to the grand central city of the angelic host. 

It's exactly the same as he remembers. But this time, he's not the only one who's discontent. 

A lot of the others are talking. He can hear them, whispering to each other when he walks along the streets. He follows the sound of their voices, turns down an alley, and when it opens into a courtyard, he sees a throng of angels crowded together. They stand and speak their minds. They are blunt and unforgiving. One or two of them are bold enough to rage against the Plan.

He stands at the edge of the crowd and listens.

Eventually, they disperse. 

He watches them go. When they've left, he sits down in the courtyard to eat his lunch and think about what it means that so many angels are tired and angry.

He returns to the courtyard the next time they gather. And again after that. He becomes a fixture at these rallies, nodding in agreement sometimes, even sharing an idea or two if he feels like it. But he's not their comrade. Not really. They never bother to tell him their plans. 

So when Lucifer rebels and the fighting erupts, he decides he wants no part of it. 

"To the void with this," he thinks and heads for the road. He turns his back on the city and moves towards starlight.

But he isn't sorry it's come to this. The fighting confirms the depths of his grievance. Of course Heaven would stifle all questions, insisting on belief and loyalty — refusing to listen, refusing to change. If you ask him, they brought it on themselves. You can only crack down so long and hard before the ones that you're hurting rise up. If you don't let them speak, they're going to fight.

The system needs to be overthrown and revolution is the way it will happen. But the idea of killing anyone — well, it makes him sick to even think of it. 

Standing on the road above the city, he turns around and looks. Angels wield their swords against each other and the streets are stained gold with spilt ichor.

This can't be right, he thinks.

If only there were somewhere else — another place they could go where they could start a different system and find another way. They wouldn't need to kill each other. If only the Almighty would listen.

And so he finds himself opening with all his Grace and praying for God to _please, please, let us have a place of our own. Please, stop all the killing. I know that I'm small, but listen to me, just this once, just this time. They're killing each other, and it isn't right, and only You can stop them._

And so, he thinks, it's his own fault, isn't it, when the trumpet sounds and everything shifts around him? When his Grace burns to ashes and when, with all the rest of the malcontents, he is Falling. And that wasn't at all what he meant or what he wanted. But now he knows about treachery. He knows what it means to be betrayed by the One who told you to have faith in Me always.

So that's that, then. He's done with faith forever.

After the Fall, he feels pain for a long time. And when it finally goes away, he isn't an angel anymore. He's this other thing made of remnants, with bitterness seeping in where the hope used to live. 

But he can't dwell on it for long, because he's still not content with the system — and he means the new system this time, the realm of Hell. 

It's not great. 

It could be a lot better. 

For a start, the whole place reeks of brimstone, and that's not pleasant. He thinks a bit of engineering to drain all the sulfur pools might be in order. 

He's tired of holding back his opinions this time, so he volunteers his ideas. After all, the new hierarchy has a lot of work to do if they want to make things nice around here. 

"Shut up, Crawly. We don't do _nice_. Not anymore."

He gets that response an awful lot. And finally, they send him away.

"You like making trouble so much? Fine. Then go up there and make some trouble."

And that's how he ends up in Eden — that brilliant new world, full of life and full of wonder. It's overwhelming at first. There's so much sensory input, flooding through him faster than he can make sense of it. So he finds a pleasant rock, warm and smooth, and takes a nap for a while. When the human finds him there and wakes him up, he asks her some questions. She answers, and then he asks a few more. He's still getting his bearings, really — trying to work out the logic and limits under which this system operates. 

It's pretty harsh to blame him for the whole thing with the apple. And just when he was starting to like it here, too. He's about ready to slink back to Hell and bother some demons again, when something else catches his eye. There, on the wall, is the most dazzlingly beautiful creature he's ever seen. So he decides to slither over and investigate.

And that's it. The memory fades out, because Aziraphale knows the rest of it already. That thrilling yet awkward conversation, the start of something altogether different.

"A new system," Aziraphale says. "That's what you asked for."

He laughs. 

And Crowley doesn't get it, not at first.

"Oh!" he says, when the realization hits him. "You mean us!?"

And it makes sense. They are two different answers to the same old question — What have You made me for? 

To serve. To be kind.

To question. To strive to make things better.

Together, they are a binary system.

Light and dark are just the aspect, the clothes perhaps — another metaphor — dyed differently but the fabric is the same. They look different, but they aren't. Not really. Because the way they move is a unified motion. It's the same tide, the same energy, and yes, the same system. They are in it together — no, they've built it together. There is nothing here that doesn't belong.

The velvet darkness — the heart of Crowley's demonic essence — spirals itself around Aziraphale's shining, brilliant heart of Grace — wounded but not undone. And then Aziraphale's old wound allows further closeness. It forms a gap where the shadow flows in, pushing very gently and filling the place that was carved out and empty before.

"Is this alright?" Crowley asks, though he already knows the answer because they aren't thinking as separate persons, but instead as one dual-minded entity where every thought is uniquely authored but also shared.

"More than alright. It's very good."

He feels them both relaxing further. And he's also aware that on the physical plane they've moved closer. Their faces touch, they stand temple to temple. Crowley feels Aziraphale's breath on his cheek and against his lips. 

"You're dear to me." 

It's not clear who thinks it first, but the thought belongs to both of them.

In the ethereal realm, Aziraphale's light pulses against him. He answers with a surge of darkness. And where shadow makes contact with light, a shimmering transformation begins. It's like hands combing through feathers, ruffling them dark and then smoothing them iridescent when each filament aligns just so. At the edges of being, Crowley ignites into brilliance.

It all happens so fast. The time between suggestion and consent is almost instantaneous. They fall into rhythm together. Bright and then dark, rolling and switching from one state to the other. 

In the other realm, Aziraphale's mouth is warm and wet and it suddenly feels so right to kiss him. A moment later they're resting together, kissing and holding onto each other with the softness of Crowley's bed beneath them.

It's delicious and strange. A sexual experience isn't something he'd normally suggest. It's not typically part of how he moves through the world. But there's something different about sharing a soul, about the rising ecstasy of spiritual joining that causes a corporeal reaction. He's caught up in a desperate urge to be physically close, to seek tension and release. 

Besides, it's not some human carnal act. One moment is smooth skin pressed to smooth skin, and then next is a cacophony of intermingled senses. Matter shifts and exists in different states at the same time. Or it seems to. Who can say what's real?

Crowley is penetrated. His cunt is wet and Aziraphale thrusts inside it. Anus too, stretched and opened around the angel's thick cock. And at the same time, his own phallus is buried hilt deep inside Aziraphale. Their cocks rub together, their vulvas are slick as they press close. Elegant micropenis and proud, elongated clitoris push and drag and weep fluid onto sensitive skin. It's every variety of human genital configuration he's ever worn — for curiosity or fashion — moving together at the same time, a kaleidescopic reality of Crowley fucking Aziraphale. And vice versa.

It builds and builds, leading them to the exquisite moment when it all comes crashing together, a chorus of shared orgasms with the searing intensity of all the different ways their bodies are joined.

And it isn't real. 

Or it is, but it's yet another metaphor — like the aircraft and clouds, but working in reverse. It's another way to ease the transition, to extricate themselves from the metaphysical plane and return to a separate, embodied consciousness.

Crowley opens his eyes to find they are standing together in the kitchen where they started. He's fully clothed. They both are. He's still holding hands with Aziraphale, though they're closer now, like partners in a slow dance.

"I think I need to sit down," Aziraphale says and starts to pull away.

"Wait!" Crowley understands the urge to step back. It's all so overwhelming. And yet, it seems important not to lose whatever momentum they've gained. "Let's try swapping first," he says.

"Oh." Aziraphale sounds dazed, but he manages to squeeze Crowley's hand and make eye contact again without flinching away. "Yes, of course."

And this time, Crowley knows what to do. It's not a diabolical miracle at all. Instead of siphoning power from the ever-burning fires Below, he looks inward. Like the poles of a battery, the opposite spheres of Grace and Darkness have aligned between himself and Aziraphale in such a way that they connect and flow. They can generate a miracle on their own, no Heaven or Hell required.

He holds Aziraphale's hand and transforms himself. It's easy now that he understands the way of it. Every particle ignites, flaring into brilliance and matching the aspect of Grace that Aziraphale has revealed and shared with him. He can still feel the velvet darkness of his own true self, except that it flashes brighter now. 

It's a neat trick.

When the change is complete, he's looking at a perfect replica of himself. It's astonishingly accurate, down to the lines on his forehead that crease when Aziraphale raises his eyebrows. 

The angel looks Crowley up and down and then glances at the mirror to check his own reflection.

"It's well done," he says, and he sounds exactly like Crowley.

"Will it work, do you think? Oh, that's odd!" Crowley says, startled by how different it feels to speak with Aziraphale's voice.

"Yes," Aziraphale says. "I'm sure it will work. Even if our impressions of each other aren't perfect, I think we'll have some leeway."

"Better hope so."

He wants to ask how Aziraphale can be so certain — how he can know and not be afraid. Because Crowley can feel it somehow. Aziraphale radiates a sense of calm determination. But he doesn't have to ask. Aziraphale answers him without being prompted.

"My dear, I don't think either side will spot the difference in someone they've never really seen to begin with."

**Author's Note:**

> Comments on the story always welcome. Concrit on the writing also welcome.


End file.
